AUBURN – State authorities are seeking an injunction against three Lewiston men accused of assaulting a man as he was leaving a gay bar in Lewiston.

Brandon Staples, 21, Ryan Thompson, 18, and Joseph Thompson, 24, were charged with misdemeanor assault in the March 22 incident. The three have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled for June trials in Androscoggin County Superior Court, a clerk said.

Prosecutors at the Maine Attorney General’s Office wrote in court papers that the alleged victim left the Sportsman Athletic Club on Bates Street and was walking near Main and Blake streets around midnight.

The three defendants, who didn’t know the man, called him an offensive name and assaulted him with closed fists, the state wrote in court papers.

He fell to the ground and the defendants “kicked him while continually calling him … homophobic epithets,” the records said.

Three people driving by in a car stopped to help the victim, the memo said. They identified the alleged assailants for police.

The victim sustained numerous facial injuries and a broken thumb.

If the court were to grant the state’s motion for a preliminary injunction, the defendants would be prohibited from:

• Threatening or using physical force or violence against the victim;

• Threatening or using physical force or violence against anybody because of their sexual orientation;

• Causing damage to, destruction of or trespass on the property of anybody because of their sexual orientation;

• Threatening or using physical force, violence, harassment, damage to property or trespass on property against anybody because that person witnessed the conduct alleged in the complaint or because that person complained of or testified about that conduct or cooperated in an investigation about it;

• Harassing, intimidating, speaking to, telephoning or otherwise communicating with the man they are charged with assaulting, except through an attorney in connection with the defendants’ defense in any criminal proceeding;

• Knowingly coming within 150 feet of their alleged victim, his home or place of work; and

• Encouraging or causing anybody else to engage in the above conduct or helping anybody to engage in that conduct.

If the defendants’ violations of law were to continue, “(the victim) and other members of the gay community will suffer immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage,” the state said in its motion.

If a judge were to grant an injunction and the defendants violated its terms, they could be charged with crimes punishable by up to 364 days in jail.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Harnett, director of civil rights education and enforcement for the state, said his office hadn’t seen an increase in sexual orientation-related attacks since the Maine Legislature passed a law allowing same-sex marriage. But Harnett said it likely was too soon to tell.